Lecture To Challenge 'Bell Curve' Myth

3-18-97

University Park, Pa. -- Michael Hout, professor of sociology and director of the Survey Research Center at the University of California-Berkeley, will deliver the 1996 Francis Sim Memorial Lecture at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 20, in 101 Thomas Building on the University Park campus.

Hout, internationally renowned expert in the field of stratification research, will discuss "Inequality by Design: Myths, Data and Politics." Hout is co-author (with five Berkeley colleagues) of "Inequality By Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth" (Princeton University Press, 1996). Hou challenges the claims of "The Bell Curve," the bestseller by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, by re-analyzing the very data Herrnstein and Murray used to support their assertion that inherited differences in intelligence explain inequality.

A native of Pittsburgh, Hout earned his B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh in 1972 and his Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1976. Author of three books and more than 50 papers in scholarly journals, he recently received the Clifford C. Clogg Award of the Population Association of America, named in honor of the late Penn State sociologist. He is spending the 1996-97 academic year as a visiting fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York.

The Sim lectureship is named in honor of the late Francis M. Sim, who taught in the sociology department at Penn State from 1967 to 1985. The lecture is open to the public.

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